Writers of the Black Chicago Renaissance

Frank Garvin Yerby

frank garvin yerBy (september 5, 1916–november 29, 1991) James l. hill From the Jim Crow section of Augusta, Georgia, to voluntary expatriation in Europe, from automobile plant technician during World War II to recipient of honorary doctorate degrees, from social protest writer in the 1940s to American King of the Costume Romance, and from Chicago Works Progress Administration (WPA) writers’ colony to international celeb novelist translated into twenty-three languages, Frank Garvin Yerby did indeed make history both as an African American and American writer, becoming one of the most commercially successful and popular writers of the twentieth century. Seminal to each of these Yerby journeys were his work with the Federal Writers’ Project in Chicago and his becoming acquainted with WPA writers and artists, including Richard Wright, Willard Motley, Margaret Walker, William Attaway, and Arna Bontemps, all of whom would eventually make their mark in American literature and help define the developing Black Chicago Renaissance. For Yerby, the Chicago WPA experience was an opportune apprenticeship, and as he told Current Biography in 1946, the brief period he spent with other Chicago Renaissance writers was the best literary training he had received.1 One of the most prolific writers of the twentieth century, Yerby was the first African American to write a best-selling novel and have a book purchased by a Hollywood studio for a film adaptation. During his prolific career as a writer, he published thirty-three novels between 1946 and 1985, almost one a year. Many of his novels were bestsellers and book club selections, and sales of his novels during his career totaled more than 62,000,000 copies hardback and paperback. Three of his early novels, The Foxes of Harrow, The Golden Hawk, and The Saracen Blade, were made into movies, and a fourth, Bride of Liberty, was adapted as a one-hour television show. According to Russell B. Nye in The Unembarrassed Muse, Yerby ranks as one of the five most popular writers of the second half of the twentieth century.2 Despite these unprecedented achievements, however, Yerby never enjoyed the critical acclaim of many of his contemporaries of the Chicago Renaissance. frank garvin yerBy • 387 FrankGarvinYerby,thesecondchildandthefirstofthreesonsofRufusGarvin and Wilhelmina (Smythe) Yerby, was born in Augusta, Georgia, on September 5, 1916. A well-established and influential black family in the Augusta community, the Yerbys lived in a two-story frame house on the corners of Eighth and Hall Streets, just outside the heart of Augusta’s largest predominantly black residential area, “The Terry.” Yerby’s birth home, located originally at 1112 Eighth Street, has now been moved to the campus of Paine College, where it is being restored as a Yerby historic site. Rufus Yerby, the writer’s father, worked as an itinerant hotel doorman in Miami and Detroit and traveled periodically to and from Augusta. Consequently, Yerby, his older sister, Ellena, and his two younger brothers, Paul and Alonza, were raised primarily by their mother, Wilhelmina, a former teacher, and by three aunts, Louise, Fannie, and Emily Symthe, who also were teachers. As a young man, Yerby developed two strong propensities that occupied most of his time. At an early age, he became a voracious reader, and he also enjoyed tinkering with mechanical and electronic devices. Two interesting anecdotes about his early formative years are indicative of his boyhood penchant toward literacy. Sometimes when given money for lunch at school, he would save it until he accumulated enough to purchase a particular book he wanted, and Yerby frequently fabricated stories that he related to his aunts. Once, when he was reprimanded by his Aunt Emily for inventing stories, his Aunt Fannie remarked prophetically, “Oh, let him alone! He might be a writer some day.”3 The Yerby children attended Haines Institute, then a private black school in Augusta with both elementary and high school grades, and now a public secondary school renamed Lucy Laney High School. Yerby quickly acquired a reputation among his classmates for being an avid reader and a studious youth. In an interview, Rebecca Zealey, one of his teachers at Haines, revealed that Yerby preferred reading to taking advantage of the school recess periods and sometimes had to be forced to go outside with the other students.4 After graduation from Haines Institute, Yerby attended Paine College, a black undergraduate college in Augusta, where he majored in English and minored in foreign languages. While still an undergraduate, he transferred to the City College of New York; however, illness forced...